Today’s guest writer is Jennifer Brinkmeyer, who teaches Reading Strategies and U.S. Lit Honors in Iowa City, IA. Jennifer loves teaching students how to commit rebellious acts of literacy. She is constantly seeking ways to bring her writing life into the classroom to help students validate their own writing lives. Today, Jennifer shares about teaching […]
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed by now that I’m as likely to retweet something that entertains me as I am to retweet good educational practices when I see them (I’d argue both are important–one for reasons of my sanity and…actually I guess both of them for that.). Which means, for me, […]
I want my students to be continually thinking about context–cultural, historical, and otherwise. For many of my students, the boundaries of their writing AND reading are constricted by their narrow contextual pools of knowledge. Helping them to see why the narratives of their history classes or the view through the microscope in biology are actually […]
Mentor Text: The Last Jedi and the 7 Basic Questions of Narrative Drama (video essay) by Sage Hyden Techniques: Using A Structure To Defend A Thesis Using Subcategories to Organize Argument Layering Evidence Addressing Counterpoint Without Losing Focus Addressing Canon While Discussing A Modern Text Literary Analysis Background – My Twitter feed actually represents my career […]
On any day last week, a quick sweep of my three senior classes offered the same scene: gaunt, gray faces; foreheads on tables; backpacks exploding with papers; hair teased and tangled by frustrated fingers. It’s the October crunch, and my seniors are feeling the pressure of first quarter assessments, college applications, and fall SAT testing. […]
Mentor Text: Problematic Faves: Firefly by Alyssa Fikse Techniques: Applying a Critical Lens Critical Appreciation Focusing an Argument Background – This week’s mentor text speaks to a couple of things that come up frequently in my classroom. One of those things is that pop culture can be treated as a text, and we discuss it […]
I think what I liked most about middle school was the fact that I had two English classes: Language Arts AND Reading. Now, as a high school English teacher with three sections of an intensive literature course, I often think back to middle school and wish my classes were twice as long so I could […]
I used to work a very structured private school. It was a school for students with ADHD and learning disabilities. The structure was part of the programming there that served to support these students as learners, not just at that school, but if they returned to public school classrooms. Though I teach much differently now […]
If you want students to write deep analysis, try starting with a medium and “text” that’s familiar to them: The opening sequences of their favorite TV shows.
As the daffodils start sprouting near sidewalks and the draft in my apartment warms to where I don’t feel compelled to don a housecoat at all hours and become more of a Rose Nylund than I already am, the longer, sunshiny, pollen-y days give me the itch to experiment. In the last two weeks, my […]
moving writers 